


Childhood's End

by WingsforWinter



Series: 30 Day Cheesy Tropes Challenge [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Demon Dean Winchester, Gen, Pre-Slash, Self-Harm, Torture, Torturer Dean, possible triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:47:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingsforWinter/pseuds/WingsforWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester makes a demon deal to bring his mom back when he is only four years old.</p>
<p>Once he is dragged into the Pit, he knows that no one can save him. </p>
<p>He doesn't deserve to be saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childhood's End

**Author's Note:**

> Day 4: Angel/Demon AU 
> 
> Part of the [30 Day Cheesy Tropes Challenge](http://ghiraher.tumblr.com/post/37135733342/30-day-cheesy-tropes-challenge)
> 
> Playing fast and loose with this one. 
> 
> SERIOUS TRIGGER WARNING! READ THE TAGS!

Dean Winchester sold his soul to a crossroads demon when he was just four years old. He was told it was to bring his mother back after a house fire claimed her life. He couldn’t remember doing it, but that didn’t stop the hellhounds that came for him shortly after his fourteenth birthday.

 

After, as he was chained to Alistair’s rack and bleeding out all over filthy concrete that he couldn’t be sure was actually there, he wondered if John or Mary knew what he had done. If they knew the consequences, and that was why Mary loved him so tenderly. Why John was always angry with him, why he always pushed Dean away.

 

How could they not? Dean wasn’t raised a hunter, but Mary had been. And John was from a long line of Men of Letters—some super-duper secret club dedicated to collecting information about the supernatural.

 

They had to have known.

 

The thought was insidious. It broke him down more than Alistair’s chains and knives and sickening laugh ever could. It ate away at him until it was all he could think about. He forgot the color of his little brother’s eyes. He forgot the feeling of grass on his bare feet. He forgot the way it felt to have something in his stomach other than bile and his own blood. But he remembered that his family should have known what happened and tried to stop it, tried to save him.

 

The feeling of betrayal turned to rage, to blind hatred, until one day (or night, or afternoon, it was impossible to tell) when Alistair had come to him, telling him he’d been in the pit for 30 years—though sometimes the demon would say 200, or that he was just brought down a few hours ago, so he could not be trusted—and asked him the same question he’d heard countless times, Dean said yes.

 

Yes, he would take up his own knife. Yes, he would carve and burn and rend other souls to pieces to spare himself the pain. He would satisfy this overwhelming hatred within him by torturing the other damned until he found someone he recognized. Mary might make it Upstairs, but John wouldn’t. Dean was sure of it. And he would relish the day he saw his father again.

 

Dean wasn’t sure how long he’d done just that, until it wasn’t enough anymore. He would slice and shred and scorch and snap whoever was on his table until there was nothing left, but the yawning pit inside was no longer satiated. He became even more ferocious, more violent, but the hole in him only got bigger, more insatiable.

 

_This is what it must feel like to be a demon_ , he thinks.

 

So ferocious, so violent was he that he took to ripping other demons apart as well. If they could not get another soul on his rack fast enough, he would go after them too. He became a true terror, a monster among monsters, and still the chasm within him grew.

 

One day (or night, or afternoon) his hand slipped as he was etching an intricate design into a screaming soul’s back and the blade dug into his own hand. He flinched from the first pain he’d felt in an untold amount of time, but then paused.

 

He felt the pain—sharp and stinging, but nothing else. The pit inside him quieted. Turning his own insatiable hatred on himself somehow helped. He became a closed circuit of violence and pain and terrible anger. 

 

 

 

Torturing other demons had made Dean an outcast, but it wasn’t exactly unheard of. Torturing himself, however, made Dean an abomination. He was left utterly alone, in the darkest corner of his own personal hell with nothing but his razor for company, and that was how the angel found him.

 

Castiel told him later that he led a garrison of angels sent to rescue souls that weren’t meant for hell; the people who were tricked into making deals, the self-sacrifices, the people that weren’t in any frame of mind to make that kind of choice. Children.

 

He fought like hell when the angel came for him, fought even harder when he took Dean’s blade away, but then Castiel held him, and all the fight drained out to pool on the filthy concrete that may or may not actually be there.

 

The angel opened his wings, and a voice that Dean did not recognize passed his lips. He had not spoken since saying ‘yes’ to Alistair. It was deeper now, rougher. He asked his savior where they were going, arms wrapped tight around Castiel’s torso.

 

“We are going to see your family so they can stop looking for a way to free you.” Something in Dean shattered. He had not cried in decades, but he cried then. He was wrong, he was wrong. He was so thankful for it he’d die if he wasn’t already dead.

 

“A-and after?” he choked out. He didn’t want to live again. He couldn’t. He’d been in Hell too long. He’d been a demon longer than he’d been alive.

 

Castiel’s arm tightened around him, one hand gripping his bloody shoulder. “Then,” He looked down at Dean, blue eyes unfathomable, “I will bring you Home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was told my ending wasn't quite clear. It was implied that Castiel is going to take Dean to Heaven. 
> 
> I was not implying that Castiel was going to take advantage of an ambiguously aged demon, I swear.


End file.
